


in the gutter (look at the stars)

by maharieel



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, F/F, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Internal Monologue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-25
Updated: 2017-04-25
Packaged: 2018-10-23 19:37:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10725837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maharieel/pseuds/maharieel
Summary: Kallia Tabris sacrifices herself to slay the archdemon.





	in the gutter (look at the stars)

**Author's Note:**

> for the prompt: dying while smiling/telling a joke

It should have been easy.

Take the sword, stand atop the archdemon and stab until sword-tip hit stone and the world was saved in a brilliant glow of light. It was what the past year had wound down to, that single moment, her against the unthinkable, and it should have been easy for Kallia Tabris to save the world.

It is never easy. The world is savage and raw and unfair and it is never easy to save it.

Many things in her life had wound down to _should haves_ and _could haves_ and _would haves_. Bloodied knuckles and bruised knees had fashioned her for war, had steeled her heart against the horrors the world would throw at her and Kallia Tabris had accepted that from the day flat ear children had dragged her into an alley and beat her into the dust. Blood had soaked her, had crusted in her hair and stained her nails black. The world was unkind to those with soft hearts such as hers, and so she had taken a hammer and beat herself into a more acceptable shape.

Not the wisest choice, perhaps. She _should have_ retained the heart of feathers her father had given her; she _could have_ accepted the beatings as another part of the life laid out before her; she _would have_ lived a more content life with a husband and children at her ankles. But Kallia Tabris had been fashioned for battle, war drums ringing in her heart and blood staining her palms, and the enemy does not pity those who cower in the past.

The sword was heavy in her hands as she ran. It should have been simple, to slay the archdemon, but it’s hulking form and endless minions were not so content as to lay down and die, but neither was she. Torn skin, wild eyes, bloodied hands. Kallia Tabris was a savage to the flat ears of Denerim, a freckled mess in the bard’s bedroll, and a battered tempest to the enemies who had thrown her world at her feet as if she would avert her gaze and sob.

The world is savage and raw and unfair and it is easy to save when you have nothing else left to live for.

Blood had been pouring from the archdemon’s neck when she came close enough to look it in the eye. Swirling hues of black. Such things should have threatened her, but the torn skirts and bruised thighs of her cousins had bred a fierceness within her that was not threatened into submission so quickly. Sword tip met scaled hide easily, the only easy thing that had come her way in a while, and she had revelled in the tear of flesh under her grip. Blood had spilled, thick and black and wrong, and Kallia Tabris had smiled at the impossibility of it all.

A flash of red hair. A scream in the distance. Some things should be easy, but the look on Leliana’s face through the flames and dust and blood was never going to be easy. It could have been, if only two people would have bedded each other despite the seed of hate that brewed between them, but that was a kind of death in itself, wasn’t it? The faces of her cousins had flared in her mind, and she had traded her happiness for theirs. Hands on breasts and stars tangled in hair and lips on lips in her memories, and Kallia Tabris had sacrificed it all for others.

It is never easy to save the world. It is savage and raw and unfair. It is beautiful and bright and full of love. It is never easy to save the world because so many things ride on it and what right do you have to decide its fate?

Some seeds must be sowed in the hearts of the dead in order to bloom though. Some seeds thirst for blood.

The smile was instinct, flowers already blooming through the cracks in her heart of stone, as she turned her gaze to meet Leliana’s across the fray. It hadn’t ended in beautiful light, it had _burned_ her skin from her bone, and yet her lips had remained curled as easy as breathing.

_Eyes blue like the sea, flowers in her father’s garden, inscriptions on daggers, sunsets over mountains, freckled bodies on freckled bodies, laughter-filled hovels, arms tight around bodies, songs carrying over campfires._

Kallia Tabris decided it was easy to save the world if only you focused on the light.


End file.
